Mrs. Douce's dusty face hardened and dried till it became a very desert of physiognomy. "Well," she said, "you are not a boy, and I--well, I am old enough, I suppose," with a catch of the breath, "to be your mother. So we may as well speak plainly. You see that Natalia is deeply interested in you; you consented for her sake to give up going to the front; and now you coolly abandon her. Not content with that, you begin to taunt her with her melancholy. I little expected this, Mr. Barrington. I little expected it." "Oh, you're unjust!" said Zadoc S. "At least, you'll admit you've wounded her feelings and ought to apologize," was the rejoinder. "Perhaps so," he confessed, feeling sorry for Natalia. "Go and see her," urged his landlady, gently, though still with something of the desert atmosphere in her voice. "Speak to her about it." "I will." "But, remember there's only one thing can make your conduct consistent and restore her happiness." "You mean," said Barrington, exploring the dent in his chin with his forefinger--"you mean, propose?" Then, as if this were quite out of the question, he shook his head vigorously, smiling. "Of course not that; but I don't see what else you can mean." "Nothing else," said the voice of the desert. "It's impossible," he rejoined, quietly. "You _must_," responded the voice. Then Barrington delivered a crushing blow. "I have promised to marry some one else," he said, with great composure. To Mrs. Douce's gasping, broken, indignant queries he replied that the lady's name was Magill, and that she was a widow possessed of ample means. There had long been an understanding between them, he declared, but he had been unwilling to marry without an independent property of his own. Unable to acquire this, he had hoped at least to gain distinction in the army. That hope he had sacrificed out of pure sympathy for Miss Natalia Douce's distress; and now he had concluded to marry without further delay. VI. I pass over the period of internal convulsion in the Douce hearts, widowed and maiden, which followed Barrington's disclosure. For a time their disconcertment was so obvious that Rawsden had it all his own way in making contemptuous remarks about them to Miss Sneef; and to judge from the conversation of these two singular young people, you would have supposed that nothing could give them such exquisite delight as to prove that all human beings are unspeakably false and absurd, and that if they could but have succeeded in showing each other--Miss Sneef on her part, and Rawsden on his--how they two were the falsest and absurdest of all, their happiness would have been complete.